Obama, Warrior For The Middle Class

There’s much to be said that the White House now seems to be ripping off Liz Warren’s impromptu, unscripted, passionate articulation for why she is running. Much like Biden and Neil Kinnock, but with more awareness. The irony speaks for itself.

The wealth destruction and transfer are an accomplished fact – not psychologically realized by those whose self-image is still ‘middle class’. The middle class already lost a war they didn’t even realize started. Mimicking Warren and feigning to stand for the vanquished now on a blasted battlefield? It might yield positive personal results for Obama the individual? It’s still playing with shadows flitting behind the abstract and disconnected kabuki that is contemporary politics.

Comments

@jwb Appreciate the thoughtful, almost deconstructive analysis, JWB. Some of that was intent, more than some happy accident.

The intent going in was to apply texture and space to present something apart from the smooth sheen of 1080 P/1080i Hi Def 5.1 surround *production* that’s submerged us all – including graphics from here.

Your perception of temporal or cognitive progression/motion/possibilities acute. The initial concept was to try to convey that stance through actual animation, but the absence of motion or morphic potential turned out to be ‘the happy accident.’

Setting aside your text for the moment, which has its own interest, I am moved by this picture in ways that I cannot articulate and that seem irreducible to, if obviously related to, the textual gloss. The green Obama who presents us with a form adequate for the content; the red Obama whose form cannot contain the content, a content that is bursting forth from within and ripping him apart; the purple Obama in the process of being placed under erasure: what once seemed possible now disappearing from view, half forgotten. Foreground to background progression suggests a historical sequence. The ghostly word cloud hovering in the background but also bleeding forward so that it seems as much a screen as a backdrop. Mostly I’m drawn to the red Obama, the color of the revolutionary red, of fraternity, but also, almost accidentally of the Right in American politicsâ€”an accident, at least so the story is told, of television election coverage. In the image, the red lies to the left of green from our perspective, but to his right. Under which banner does red Obama march? Is he moving right or left? Will we tear him apart?